Youth can play important roles in water conservation and protection. Individually, as members of a family and community, and as future citizens, the youth of today have the power to act as catalysts to initiate change and guide development of future activities to ensure the health of the nation's water resources.

The Water Outreach Education and Changing Public Behavior websites offer resources to help you plan, deliver, and evaluate youth water education programs:

Explore youth education principles and the best education practices derived from those principles. Search the Water Outreach Education Database for youth-related resources and materials. Search the Changing Public Behavior, Target Audience Database to find recent research findings on how to work with youth successfully.

Other National Water Resources for Youth Educators

Agua Pura - a manual for planning a workshop for leaders in Latino communities that want to promote involvement of Latino youth in water stewardship projects.

Cooperative Extension Supports Youth Environmental Stewardship (CESYES) - a national project that seeks to strengthen the abilities of Extension educators, 4-H county and state faculty, and professionals from other natural resources agencies to serve communities, youth leaders and youth. CESYES resources include:

• Guidelines for Designing EE Materials
• Characteristics of Youth by Age
• Experiential Learning Model
• Guidelines for Learning about the Environment

Educating Young People About Water - provides the guidelines and materials to develop a community-based, youth water education program that targets youth and links key community members in partnership –all working toward common water education goals. This site includes the Youth Water Education Curricula database, which allows users to search for curricula by water topic or by grade level.

Resources by EPA and Other Federal Agencies
http://www.epa.gov/adopt/resources/epafed.html

EPA's Top-Related Water Curricula by Others
http://www.epa.gov/adopt/resources/toprelated.html

Find Youth Water-related Education Materials

Finding materials through a Google search can be overwhelming. Try one of the following databases to narrow your search more effectively.

The Bridge
http://web.vims.edu/bridge/?svr=www

The Bridge is a collection of web-accessible marine education resources. The links provided by The Bridge provide background information about the curriculum and target audience age group, and often note the number of lesson plans provided by the resource (ranging from one plan to dozens of plans per resource).  The Bridge's cache of resources is not searchable by field or subject; target age ranges are searchable but the resources frequently overlap audiences (e.g. coverage is middle school and high school).  The main menu features several additional information sources such as a Resource Center page which features various publications, literature, projects, and associated organizations that could serve as further educational resources. 

Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE)
www.dlese.org

DLESE features a comprehensive relational database of earth system educational resources searchable by keyword, grade level, resource type, collection, and curriculum standard.  The DLESE Reviewed Collection (DRC) features resources that have been reviewed by the organization's research team and found to meet specific criteria including (but not limited to) accuracy, effectiveness, and content significance. The DRC contains hundreds of resources that may pertain to water education, sorted by subject.

Educating Young People About Water: Youth Water-related Curricula Database
http://www.uwex.edu/erc/eypaw/choose.html

Educating Young People About Water (EYPAW) is a compilation of resources put together by the University of Wisconsin-Extension's Environmental Resources Center.  Although it is not a relational database, curricula are searchable by either topic or grade level.  EYPAW features links to over 150 water-related curricula divided into nine topics and thirty-seven subtopics, which can be searched using checkboxes.  Matching records are described in full bibliographic detail, and links to the original sources are provided.

Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
http://www.goenc.com/

ENC's compendium of resource types includes books, videos, curriculum units, activity booklets, teacher guides, and more.  Resource records provide bibliographic information, general resource background, specific topics covered (including a table of contents), sourcing and price information.

National Science Data Library: http://nsdl.org

The National Science Digital Library is a rich collection of resources from a wide variety of fields.  Resources can be searched through the "Advanced Search" tool, and also through the "Resources for Teachers" page.  Resources are categorized according to grade level and material format.  Materials include audio, data, image, interactive, text, and video files.  Resource searches can produce thousands of results; the first several pages of which are often relevant educational tools or other information sources.